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Barbara, tagged and monitored like a criminal

Barbara is an asylum seeker living in the UK. How the government’s immigration crackdown creates opportunities for humiliation and profit.

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Asylum-seeker Barbara is forced to wear a tag (John Grayson)

Barbara (not her real name) is not a criminal. She travelled from an African country and claimed asylum in the UK.

The Home Office refused her claim and locked her up for eight months in Yarl’s Wood, the Bedfordshire detention centre, run by Serco, notorious for guards’ sexual abuse of inmates and racist behaviour.